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The national collection illustrates and invites research into United States philately and postal operations. It contains prestigious postal issues and specialized collections, archival postal documents and three-dimensional objects that trace the evolution of the postal services.

The National Postal Museum is divided into galleries that explore America's postal history from colonial times to the present. Visitors learn how mail has been transported and the wondrous diversity of postage stamps.

The Museum supports a wide variety of interdisciplinary research projects which address topics of importance such as current and future postal operations, as well as philatelic and postal history. Our efforts are a resource and point of reference for research and wider investigation by historians throughout the United States and the world.

On Monday, November 11, 1918, World War I came to an end. Wrought from militarism, nationalism and imperialism, the Great War broke empires, challenged established gender and race relations, and destroyed millions of lives. Mail became the critical link for the families separated and desperate for news. Governments responded to these developments and the disruption of communication networks, and struggled to determine who should be able to communicate with whom and about what.

This symposium will be held in conjunction with the American Philatelic Society and the American Philatelic Research Library.

The call for papers closed June 15, 2017. To attend the symposium, please check back here in spring 2018 to pre-register. Send questions to: NPMResearchChair@si.edu

The eighth Postal History Symposium was held in conjunction with Aerophilately 2014, a national all-air mail philatelic exhibition with FIP recognition and worldwide participation hosted by the American Air Mail Society.

Stamps, as official government documents, can be treated as primary resources designed to convey specific political and esthetic messages. Other topics and themes for the symposium are: Stamp design’s influence on advertising envelopes and bulk mailings, censorship of stamps as propaganda as used on letters, and the role of the citizens' stamp committee or organizations that generate the designs.

The introduction of postage stamps in 1840 represented a complete overhaul in the organization and operating principles of the British Post Office. The subsequent rapid introduction of stamps to nearly every country in the world before the end of the 19th century is tangible evidence of the worldwide adoption of similar post office reforms. The 2009 Postal History Symposium will bring together collectors of classic stamps with scholars and public historians of postal reform and post office operations to examine these highly collectable cultural objects through the lens of the post office reforms that gave rise to them.

The 2008 Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposium jointly sponsored by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and the American Philatelic Society was held on September 26 and 27, 2008. This was the third national conference for academic scholars, philatelists, and industry experts to discuss their research into the history of postal organizations and systems.

This Postal History Symposium, the second national conference sponsored by the American Philatelic Society and the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, provided a forum in which philatelists, academic scholars of postal organizations and systems, public historians, and the interested public discussed and presented research integrating philately and the history of postal operations within the broader context of American history.

From 17 – 22 October 2007, the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) met in Washington, D.C., and celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. As part of that celebration, the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum hosted a one-day symposium on the history of communication technologies.

Rarely do scholars of postal organizations and systems meet and discuss their ideas and research with scholars of philately. In an attempt to bridge this gap, the National Postal Museum and the American Philatelic Society hosted a national conference on November 3 and 4, 2006, to bring together these two research groups.